Speaker
Description
Several concepts have been pursued by different research groups worldwide to realize untethered propulsion on a small size scale. Potential geometries for such untethered devices range from tubular microjets, Janus particles, or rods, over bio-inspired artificial flagella, to helical micromotors. Physical micromotors and microrobots for example are based on external physical fields such as magnetic fields and ultrasound, while the bio-hybrid micromotors mainly rely on the propulsion ability of the coupled biological entity (e.g. sperm, bacteria). In particular, I am going to talk about sperm-hybrid microrobots designed to increase the pregnancy success rate and reduce the invasiveness of current assisted fertilization technologies. These sperm-hybrid microrobots have also been used as drug carriers for gynecological cancer treatment. Finally, to translate these technologies to pre-clinical trials, we have recently reported the successful tracking of magnetically-driven micromotors in phantom, ex-vivo, and living mice with high spatial and temporal resolution employing photoacoustic imaging
